IRAGINATION

Hello. I bring what the header says and many other little tweaks that I’ve been having on hold since last December.

Checkpoints

Well, this is one that I gave a lot of thought after playing Kid Scorpion’s level. They’re really challenging, but also very frustrating to die mid-level after a bad jump. I’ve added checkpoints on some of my longer levels, and hopefully, they won’t be so frustrating anymore.

Bloom effect

I guess many of you have heard the joke about next-gen graphics = bloom. Well, this is more like a tech demo, I put on a test some of the flash filters and managed to get the effect, only for the detriment of the performance of the game, so you’ll get prettier graphics but the game will slow down a lot, at least under my tests. It is disabled by default, but if you want to see it, pause the game, go to the Graphics tab and press the Bloom toggle.

But fear not. I got excellent results playing the game at 256 x 244. It’s small, but the bloom effect didn’t slow down my PC at all.

I’m rather impressed considering this is still Flash 8 and AS2. The promise of better performance sure encourages me to port my engine to AS3 in the future.

Also, Kid Scorpio brings us a new level. Get them at the Custom Maps section.

Update

I forgot to mention this yesterday, but I also updated the Bass Abyss level editor to 1.0.1. It includes the checkpoint tile. Also, a new stage enemy that I’ve been having on hold since December too. I think I’ll go this route, adding enemies to the level editor, so authors can give them use sooner than me considering my little free time.

Nothing like a freezing themed character for the holiday season, uh? Enter Freeze Man. You know him as the final boss from Fire Man Incoming Storm, and now you can play with him as you make your way in the Bass Abyss sprite fest.

His run mode is similar to Samus’ and Doom Guy’s. Just hold down SHIFT to keep running.

His regular shot spreads when hitting walls. Use that to cover you and attack enemies beyond your direct reach.

His buster shot takes longer to load, but it is somewhat stronger and especially devastating with Imps.

As a plus, he can also shot downwards. This might be useful in rare situations, but I tried to keep his moves as true as they were in Incoming Storm.

No new levels from me, but for those craving for new maps, S.C.O.R.P.I.O.N. have just sent a completely new set of 13 levels for your enjoyment. Get them at the Custom Map section as usual. He usually designs his maps for Bass, and maybe Samus, so keep that in mind before getting frustrated with other characters.

Have fun!

Yes, finally a real update. Ok, he’s not a whole new character, but I’m impressed I managed to put this together given my little free time. I can’t wait for December to enjoy some real free time.

Classic Fireman plays just as Fireman in Incoming Storm, except he has a buster. I find fun to play with him because he’s so small that many enemy projectiles miss him. Use that at your advantage, I suppose.

Also, I’ve got plenty of new levels thanks to S.C.O.R.P.I.O.N. Just copy and paste the code on Bass Abyss’ Custom Level screen to play them. They are a challenge.

I expect to code a new character for the next update. I have already plotted the gameplay so I hope to have a smooth time implementing it.

IRAGINATION is another year old, somewhere this month. I can’t remember how many years, neither the exact date, but I know it happened. Thanks for the support!

This took long enough but to make up for it I bring you my favorite FPS character: Doom Guy.

Movements

Left and Right arrows to move.
Up to jump.
Control to shoot.
Shift to run while pressed.
SUPR and PAGE DOWN to select weapon.

Weapons

Pistol
Shotgun
Chaingun
Rocket Launcher
Plasma Rifle

You start only with a Pistol with unlimited ammo, though useless in the end. You have to find the other weapons on the map and find ammo for them as well. The Chaingun and The Plasma Rifle shoot repeatedly while pressing Control.

Gameplay

With Doom Guy, the game is more action-oriented, so I decided to decrease the puzzle factor of the map by decreasing the number of disks required in every stage. This affects the other characters as well.

All the maps have enemies.

No new map for now.

I’ve changed the damage model for Doom Guy’s and Samus’ weapons. No more flashing invisible time for the enemies. Shoot at will, the enemies will process every hit.

With Doom Guy, I have all the characters I wanted to code for this game so I’m glad to have finally done it. The shotgun was especially funny to code. Ah, the memories. Special keys to select a weapon in-game: 2-Pistol, 3-Shotgun, 4-Chaingun, 5-Rocket Launcher, 6-Plasma Rifle. Those were added at the last minute so unfortunately can’t be mapped out on other keys.

In the next update, which I expect to be the last one, I’ll add the final level and some help text in the game, nothing too big, but still, I didn’t want to rush those final details in this update.

The next update shouldn’t take a lot of time, but I’m not sure anymore of how busy I’m going to be tomorrow. I’ve gotten used to the idea already so just think I’m working on it whenever I can.

New web hosting

I’ve been hosting this site by myself for at least two months. Special thanks to Valk for having hosted me for so many years. I neglected this step for lack of knowledge of how to do it or the means to do it to be exact, but after a lot of research, I felt it was time to take full responsibility for the site if I ever wanted to get more serious with it. Funny how just now when I’m busier than ever and unable to update as much as I’d want is that I took this step, but I’ll work things out somehow on the go, I hope.

Before announcing anything, the plan was to see if the new host were reliable enough to do anything with it. Then I would start a new website in a new domain, keeping this site as an archive. Moving the files was not as straightforward as I’d liked it to be, but I managed to do it. Busy in my work weeks passed by, and then I noted how little use the forum had for me considering that I’m unable to update as fast as I’d like, so I decided to keep it offline for now. That’s an energy that I expect to use in my projects until I find a better solution.

Have fun!

Play Bass Abyss
Download Level Editor

So, I’m back from my vacations just to find problems with the server. Valk and I have worked during this week to solve some of them and finally I was able to do this update.

I know it’s been a while since I released a Bass Abyss update, but the first months of this year I was busy with something else, so I can’t really say this update is the result of those months of work, just a regular update that I put together during March. This update may look big nonetheless, but remember, I had vacations and more time to focus.

Custom Levels

Now you’re able to load Custom Levels. What are they? These are levels designed by anyone with the Bass Abyss level editor. Levels or maps are just text files that you can open with Notepad.

Here’s a sample of a quite challenging level. Perhaps.

How do you play it? Just open the file, select all the text and copy it. At the Bass Abyss main menu there’s a new entry called Custom Level. Enter there, paste the text in the provided text input and press play. It’s that simple.

Where can you get more levels? Well, you can actually design your own levels.

Level Editor

Skip my ramble and get the editor NOW.

I didn’t plan to release the level editor this early, but as we get closer to version 1.0, I thought it would be a good idea to let users play with it before the final version of Bass Abyss is released. Currently the game is very stable, so at this point it’s very unlikely that any change I make will make your levels unusable.

Unfortunately the level editor is not a stand alone application. You need Flash 8 to use it, and by Flash 8 I mean the authoring tool, not just the player. There’s no way I’d have the time to code and support such a beast. So, as my level editor was just a fla file, I always considered to release it if I managed to make it usable for anyone with no coding knowledge. I hope you find it friendly enough and if you have any suggestion just let me know. Also let me try your levels, I might create a special section for them in the future.

Bass Abyss 0.9.9

So, what’s new in the main game?

– Revamped pause menu.
– Added the option to set the volume of music and sound effects.

– 2 new levels.

– The saved states of both Normal and Turbo version are now unified. Feel free to switch between versions. Your saved progress will be read for both.

– Many, many little bug fixes.

Yes, I know that currently the HTML scores are down. Don’t worry, the scores are safe, you can still check them by the game’s interface, it’s just a presentation problem, I suppose. I’ll try to figure out what’s going on with them before I take any other decision. I’m back and I need to settle a lot of stuff.

Have fun!

Check them here. Now you don’t have to load the main flash application to check them.

Sorry guys, no big update in Bass Abyss for a while. I’ve been very busy working in other projects, one for this site at least but I don’t think you’ll see it until March. I still don’t discard to be able to update Bass Abyss before that.

Adobe and the former Macromedia have been releasing a lot of tools lately. There are so many technologies I want to at least give a glance. Flash 9, Flex, Action Script 3.0, Photoshop CS3, Cairngorm, more authoring tools, more patterns, more frameworks. The list is so overwhelming, but the idea of not working smart if I don’t know the options all this stuff give me is even more scaring. Then there’s Microsoft also releasing a myriad of tools trying to get the attention of artists and developers. And besides, there are endless art tutorials and techniques that I gathered during 2006 waiting for a good time to try them.

So, I think I’ll take it easy with the updates while I give a look to all this stuff.