Porter's World

Here are the Prince’s top picks of the month, these are the best of the best from May of 2010.

1.) Cursed Treasure: Don’t Touch My Gems! – This game will speak for itself within the first few minutes of playing. Beautiful graphics, extremely balanced gameplay, and that wonderful TD magic we all love.

2.) Talesworth Adventure: Episode 1 – The mechanic has been done before, but never this well. Talesworth Adventure Episode 1 takes exploration and puzzles to a whole new level.

3.) Wallace and Gromit: Sprocket Rocket – This game is the most unique and well put together physics games since Hannah In A Choppa. It features incredible graphics, unique gameplay mechanics, and a very solid build all around.

4.) Pixel Legions – Pixel Legions is an incredibly enjoyable and well presented strategy game that plays much like Phage Wars, but with a few added features.

5.) Traverse – Traverse is the newest game released by myself and Andrew of Epic Shadow entertainment. It uses mechanics you’ve seen over and over again, but adds a few layers of polish to make it shine like none other before it. Incredibly crafty level design makes for more challenge then the genre has ever presented before; see how much of it your brain can tackle.

If you haven’t checked out all of the above games, I strongly suggest you head over and give them a play, they’re all of excellent quality. Be sure to check back frequently to the greatest source of quality games on the net.

Here are the Prince’s top picks of the month, these are the best of the best from March of 2010.

1.) Remnants of Skystone – Remnants of Skystone is an incredibly well-built, steampunk, action-oriented MMORPG. This game has the highest production value of any flash game I’ve ever seen. Incredible visuals, amazing structure, multiple character classes, vast maps to explore, flash really hasn’t seen anything to this degree yet. If you like RPG’s, action games, or MMORPG’s, definitely give Remnants of Skystone a play.

2.) Mushroom Madness 2 – Mushroom Madness is an incredibly polished and addictive action-oriented defense game. The game offers plenty of upgrades, unique enemies, multiple game modes, and a ton of charm. I loved the first one, and the second simply builds upon an already working formula.

3.) Robot Wants Kitty – I definitely have a soft spot for retro games, but I also have on for the Metroid series, this game reaches out to both my likings. Explore and work your way through a single open level, collect upgrades, and get yourself that kitty.

4.) Valthirian Arc – Valthirian Arc is a mini sized action-RPG with a lot of charm. It’s not too complex, it’s easy to play, and it has excellent audio and visuals. It is a bit lacking once you play it for a bit, but for a flash game, it’s just about right.

5.) Sushi Cat – Cats seem to be a theme this month, and Sushi cat is definitely a great addition. Everyone loves sushi (at least anyone awesome), and cats are basically amazing, combine the two, you get an awesome physics strategy game; who would have thought?

If you haven’t checked out all of the above games, I strongly suggest you head over and give them a play, they’re all of excellent quality. Be sure to check back frequently to the greatest source of quality games on the net.

Here are the Prince’s top picks of the month, these are the best of the best from January of 2010.

1.) Alice is Dead: Chapter 2 – The incredibly popular point and click adventure delivers its second chapter with even more sketchy fairy-tale goodness.

2.) Battalion: Vengeance – The Battalion series brings itself to a closing with this final chapter; fans of the series won’t be disappointed.

3.) Transcripted – Transcripted is one of the more unique games to come out as of late. It’s fantastic art style and suiting ambiance track create a fantastic atmosphere worth checking out on its own. That aside, it offers a fantastic mix of both puzzle and action elements, definitely a must play for anyone interested in either genre.

4.) Civilizations Wars – Civilizations Wars is a very charming tactical strategy game with a lot of new additions to an already working concept. Fans of Nano War will be pleased with it’s fantastic visuals and enhanced gameplay through the ability to use spells.

5.) Helicops – Helicops is an entertaining action game with very nice pseudo 3D visuals. Tons of upgrades, various enemy types, and fast paced gameplay make this a must play.

If you haven’t checked out all of the above games, I strongly suggest you head over and give them a play, they’re all of excellent quality. Be sure to check back frequently to the greatest source of quality games on the net.

Here are the Prince’s top picks of the month, these are the best of the best from October of 2009.

1.) Miami Shark – Casual, fast paced, and fun, Miami Shark does it all, and it does it well. You’ll go on a quick rampage of eating everything, people, boats, and even planes. The game is as easy to play as it is fun, a combination perfectly suited for the flash game industry. This game is definitely of excellent quality, give it a play.

2.) Clockwords – There have been a number of word games to this date, but Clockwords is by far the most entertaining I’ve come across. It’s an excellent mix of a word game, and the defense genre, something I’ve never seen before. It’s got some RPG elements to keep you addicted, and it’s a definite challenge, even for those who are rather literate. Definitely a must play for any intellectual types out there.

3.) Trap Master – The defense genre takes yet another rare step this month. Trap Master combines the excellence of both the platforming and defense genre, and does so wonderfully. Tons of traps, multiple characters, and amazing graphics, make this a must play for all.

4.) Gretel And Hansel – Gretel and Hansel is an excellent point and click adventure, with a very unique art style. You’ll enjoy rich visuals, as well as engaging story and gameplay in this excellent twisted fairy tale adventure.

5.) Cover Orange – Cover Orange is an excellent physics game with a neat twist on the genre. In each level you will prepare the stage to defend against an angry rain cloud. I don’t know what we’ve done to anger him, but it’s best we keep our defenses up regardless.

If you haven’t checked out all of the above games, I strongly suggest you head over and give them a play, they’re all of excellent quality. Be sure to check back frequently to the greatest source of quality games on the net.

Audacity

Anyone who works with audio needs a good program. When it comes to game design, audio is incredibly important, and there is always a bit of editing that must be done. Many people are under the impression that they need to pay for expensive audio software, or even hire someone to do their audio work, this isn’t true. Audacity is a free audio program that will cover all the basic needs of a game develop, and with ease. I won’t cover the entire program, but I will go over the basics that a game developer doing sound work will want to know.

Adjusting Volume Levels

An annoying issue that many games suffer, is the lack of unbalanced volumes for sounds. Having headphones on and suddenly hearing an ear piercing sound effect is the last thing your players want, and believe me it happens. To keep your players pleased with the audio of your game, and to allow them to hear all of your sound effects properly, it’s important to balance the volume of your sounds. Doing so in Audacity is incredibly easy; simply open your audio file, highlight the entire sound (or specific parts if you feel like getting fancy for whatever reason), go to Effect, then Amplify. Here you can drag the bar left and right to alter the volume change. Remember that going negative will decrease the volume of your sounds. Test your sound after each adjustment to see if you have the desired volume. I suggest having your music done first, this way you can run the swf and listen to your sound over the music as well. You should also keep your computer volume at a constant volume as go through all your sounds adjusting their volume, this will ensure that in the end, you’ll have a library of sounds that will work well together, and stand out over your music just the right amount.

Cleaning Up A Music Loop

First off, and most importantly, you need quality music to work with. If you’re looking for sources, check out my article on music for games. If you’re taking the free approach, and using music such as that which can be found in the Newgrounds Audio Portal, you’ll likely need to do some editing to the tracks before they’re ready to use. If you download a song from the net, even a loop, you’ll still generally have some work to do, depending on the source. Once you’ve selected a music loop, go ahead and open it up in Audacity. You’ll see no issues at first glance, in fact, testing the loop will sound as if it will loop perfectly; in reality, it will be alright, but nowhere near perfect. If you click on the magnifying glass tool, found on the top left in Audacity, you can zoom in on the sound waves to get a closer look. Take a look at the very beginning and end of your audio, you’ll find that there’s a straight line of absolute silence; even if this is 1/5 of a second, it’s going to show (You may have to zoom in multiple times to see this). Zoom in as much as needed and remove the silence as best as possible be selecting it with the mouse, and pressing delete. Do this to the end of the loop as well, removing any silence found at the end of the track. Now for the testing phase. Highlight the entire track, then press Ctrl + C to copy it. Now click on the two arrows pointing to the right in your playback toolbar, this will take your current selection tool to the end of your track. Paste the entire track by pressing Ctrl+V. You should now have a file with your loop copied twice, the copy starting immediately at the end of the original loop. If you successfully removed the silence at the beginning and end of your loop, you should be able to play the sound file and hear absolutely no hiccups in the middle where the repeat is taking place. If the loop still doesn’t sound right, and you’re certain you removed all the silence and copied the track correctly, it’s safe to say that the “loop” you downloaded wasn’t the greatest loop after all. If all went well, press Ctrl + Z until the copy of the loop is removed (this was only needed to test that it does indeed loop). You now have an excellent loop and are good to go, be sure to save the file as a .WAV as well as .mp3, having both is always a great idea. If you’re using flash, you’ll want to use the .WAV file, this will ensure a perfect loop after flash compresses your file to an mp3. If you’re using something else, such as FlashDevelop and Flex to compile, you’ll be forced to use a .mp3 file since .WAV’s aren’t supported. There is a work around for this, however that’s a bit complicated and will be a different post for a different day. All in all, if you’re using flash, use the .WAV file and you should be good to go.

Creating A Loop From A Non-Looping, Full Length Track

If you’re not finding an existing loop with the feel you’re looking for, worry not. Many non looping songs will have portions of the song that can be taken out and turned into a loop, doing this is actually a common task for me, and I find it rather effective. This is where the true power of an audio editing program comes in, you can get some quality loops in a short time, without spending a cent. Take a look at the song Cobalt Blue Sphere, notice how long the song is, and the fact that it isn’t a loop. Now take a look at one of our past games, Gravibounce, created by Andrew and myself of Epic Shadow Entertainment. Go back to Cobalt Blue Sphere on Newgrounds, and listen to the song from 3:58 – 4:25. As you’ll see, this is the portion of the song that you hear in Gravibounce; it was cut out using audacity. Another example of me doing this is in my first solely developed game, Dominus Void. The song “Lost”, by Ryan Stevens, or Reasoner as he’s often referred to as, was edited by myself to be a title screen loop, it came out rather well. With a good ear, some patience, and a free program like audacity, you too can create great loops such as this. This is far more complicated then simply removing the silence before an already created loop, but it gives you a track that nobody else has ever used, and one of great quality. The trick is to listen to the song closely, and use your ear to find a portion of the song that can loop into itself. When you’ve located the proper position, roughly cut out everything before and after the portion of the song you’ll be using. Be sure to give yourself some extra wave length, this is a good idea seeing as you can remove whatever you want, but you can’t add to the file once you’ve removed too much. Zooming in during the editing process will also give you much more accuracy over what you delete, and you can often see where the new measures starts due to the visual increases in wave length. Use your ear and closely narrow the intro down to the first beat of a measure, this is usually pretty easy to determine in a song, unless it’s something with a tremendous amount of percussion. Once you’ve got the intro down, edit the end of the file so that it ends at the end of a measure, this is usually after 4 major beats as most music is in 4/4 time. Be sure to slice only a little off at a time, then use the testing method as mentioned earlier. Count the beats as the loop plays, if it hiccups before the 4th beat plays, you’ve cut too much off, if it plays a little bit passed the 4th beat, you’ve still got a little more cutting to do. This is an advanced technique, and takes some practice, but it can produce some pretty awesome loops, ones that only your game will have at that. As a rule of thumb, always ask the artist if you can edit their work to create a loop, and always give them credit for their original piece.

Cutting Down A Sound Effect’s File Size

Audio is by far the biggest contributor to flash game file size. Although there are a number of compression options to reduce file sizes for audio, there are also a number of techniques that can be done before the files are even imported into your game’s library. One of the most simple, and effective, is to cut the length of your sound effects. If you open up many of your sound effects in audacity, you’ll notice that the sound waves die out, and trickle for some time, often times doubling the wave length of a sound. Although there is indeed sound going on here, you often times can’t hear it, especially over music. To greatly reduce the file size of effects, simply cut off these trickling endings bit by bit. Each time you cut, listen to the sound to ensure that quality isn’t lost, if it isn’t, cut some more. You’ll be surprised at how much of a sound wave can be cut off before any audible changes occur. Using this method on your entire library of sound effects will greatly reduce your file size, making for quicker load times, and in the end, happier players.

Correcting Audio Files

Ever had an mp3 file that flash just wouldn’t accept? The reason for this is most likely that your mp3 file has a bit rate that flash doesn’t support. You can check the bit rate by right clicking on your sound file, going to properties, then to summary. If the bit rate is not one that is shown on chart below, you’ll likely encounter problems. The good news is, you can simply import your audio file into Audacity, then export it as an mp3 again; this will change the bit rate to 112 kbps, the default bit rate for mp3′s in Audacity.

Bit Rate Chart, Source: Articulate Blog

Conclusion

That’s a lot of power for a free audio program, respect to the authors for such an awesome program. Aside from the above, you can do plenty of other complex variations to your audio files. Some of these include pitch changes, tempo changes, adding echo, adding reverberation, bass amplification, and more. Audacity may not be a full fledged audio program, but it definitely has what’s needed to take care of your basic audio editing needs, and that should be enough for any flash game developer.

Here are the Prince’s top picks of the month, these are the best of the best from September of 2009.

1.) Momentum Missile Mayhem 4 – Momentum Missile Mayhem 4 is a fast paced, action packed physics game like no other. I rarely sit down and play an entire flash game these days, this one really drew me in and presented an excellent level of challenge. Tons of levels, a great skill tree system, and a variety in enemies, make this an excellent game that should definitely be played by all.

2.) Madness Accelerant – Madness Accelerant offers an action filled adventure like no other flash game. Beautiful graphics and intense boss moments give an experience that really isn’t found anywhere else in flash games. Any fan of the Madness series will be truly entertained by this masterpiece of a quick action filled adventure.

3.) Mushroom Madness – Defense games have always been among player’s favorites. Mushroom Madness offers an impressive mix of charming graphics, balanced gameplay, and action oriented defense mechanics. Various weapons and upgrades make this medium sized game pass by without a dull moment, give it a play.

4.) SkyFyre – SkyFyre offers some of the internet’s most intense side scrolling shooter action. Four classes, a shop, and a level up system, all allow you to customize and play the game in a number of unique styles. Take the above combination and mix in some retro graphics, and you have one hell of a gaming experience.

5.) Back To The Cubeture – Cuboy has been a successful animation on the net for some time now. Cuboy has now entered the gaming atmosphere, and in what better way then through a time traveling adventure? Highly entertaining voice acting and a crazy story make this one of the best point and click adventure games to exist on the net today.

If you haven’t checked out all of the above games, I strongly suggest you head over and give them a play, they’re all of excellent quality. Be sure to check back frequently to the greatest source of quality games on the net.