Okay, so quite a bit more than I expected happened between my last post and now. For one thing, we've gone to more ranges and stuff, dealt with gunnery, I've built a platform bed with my own two hands (and several tools), worked on a little collab project with Step, I got married about a month ago, and now I'm home on leave. I can't believe what a pain in the ass it is just to get my housing pay though, I swear if there's an S1 than can do their job, I will be surprised...

Anyways, I know the game's made no progress, aside from ideas I get now and then. I'm gonna actually start working on it again once we finish invading Canada to get back our stolen cheese. For one thing, I definitely gotta learn to use arrays for the bullets and stuff instead of just using FOR loops. Seriously, I don't know why I didn't think of it before. Using the FOR loop, I have to check for every possible instance, rather than just the ones that actually exist. I'm sure there's lots of other stuff that I can make more efficient, but I gotta poop really bad right now, so it's hard to think of other ways.

For now, just bear with me for a bit, and most of all, love, peace, and hair grease.

I've got a bit on my plate here, we've been going back and forth to ranges like nuts, I've changed platoons again, and to top it off, Christmas leave is right around the corner, which only brings up more things, like trying to get my truck back (or at the very least trade it in for something else), and more that'll be brought up later... I hate paperwork...

But yeah, I haven't really had time to work on the game much at all. I may need help dealing with the AI crap, pretty much where my coder's block (if that's what you'd call it) is setting in. I know it's just a bunch of if-else-then stuff, but it's a shitload of if-then-else, so I don't know where to begin. The little spiderbots are easy buggers to do, seeing there's only a handful of actions they can do. (Move left/right, change aim, shoot, blow up. Too easy.) But the enemy soldiers, I'm trying to figure out how to make them actually seem to respond to the player's actions. Make them a little bit smarter than the average bear...

I've been looking a little bit into decision/behavior trees, where actions branch off into different scenarios for different factors given, but I haven't had time to REALLY get into it. Hopefully I'll be able to when things are a little less hectic... If anyone has any sort of experience with game AI stuff, please don't hesitate to let me know. I could use the help. DX

Well, I gotta go to the range for a couple weeks, so it's not likely you'll see/hear any progress from me. No real progress has been made on the enemy stuff, but I've been kind of busy. Went to the M9 range, hit 26/30 targets, qualified expert. Which is was a shock to a lot of us (including myself) since I never shot a pistol before in my life. O.o (It doesn't have as much recoil as movies and games and such make it out to be. My arms barely moved at all from it.) Most of the other guys (who already had some experience) were hitting high teens to low twenties. All I really did that probably helped was up-down drills on padlocks in the arms room for about 10-15 minutes on my own, you know get sight-picture consistent and all that jazz...
Anyways, got rifle marksmanship coming up, gonna go for expert on that too. Came close too many times in the past.
I'm sure most of the time I'll be doing nothing while not working on my grouping/zero and familiarization fire, so I'll just pull out my notebook and jot down ideas while I'm there. Wish me luck, fellas.

Okay, so I'm trying to figure out some AI crap for the enemy soldiers... naturally, platform-wise, they're gonna follow the same rules as the player. Jumping, running, etc. HOWEVER, I want them to seem a little bit smart...

* Set up different classes of soldiers (only counting ones on foot)
- rifleman - paired or burst shots and melee
- machine gunner - suppressive fire and melee
- grenadier - grenades, pistol, and melee
- anti-armor - grenades, rocket, and melee
(There will also be "heavy" versions of these guys, but I'm just worried about their thought process for now...)

Note: Typically, this is what a basic fireteam is made up of, a rifleman, autorifleman, grenadier, plus a team leader. The idea is to present an enemy that seems tactically inclined, rather than usual cannon fodder individuals that just run around like chickens and are a mere hinderance to the player's forward progress. Want the player to actually seem threatened by the enemies altogether than just their projectiles.

* ALMOST NEVER spawn one guy by himself
- the only exception would be the machine gunner, due to the high firepower

* GENERAL TACTICS:
- avoid close range
--- if in close range attempt to back out into medium range
--- if too close, initiate melee attack, then back out
- avoid far range
--- if too far out, bring it in a little bit
- avoid being a sitting duck
--- if in the same spot for more than (randomly decided between 0.5 and 1) seconds, move in some direction (preferably away from the closer range)

* RIFLEMAN TACTICS:
- fire three to five shots at the player every two seconds

* MACHINE GUNNER TACTICS:
- fire bursts of 10-15 shots at the player every three seconds

* GRENADIER TACTICS:
- if at close-medium range, fire two shots from pistol every two seconds
- if at far-medium range...
--- see if our grenade arc hits a wall between enemy and player
--- if not, throw grenade

* ANTI-ARMOR TACTICS:
- if at close range, move in (these are the only guys so far that will charge the player at close range)
- if at close-medium range
--- check grenade arc
--- if no wall, throw grenade
- if further out than that
--- launch rocket every four seconds

For now, I can't think of much more for them. Other enemies will be included of course...
- spider gunbots
- spider minebots
- auto turrets
- AA gunners
- spotlight gunners
- tanks
- trucks
- vehicle gunners
- helicopters
- ATVs

Another note, at the same time as wanting a teamwork-based enemy, I also want to occasionally implement some Metal Slug-like behaviors, like catching them off guard while they're in the middle of setting a trap, or standing around talkin', or you blow up a port-o-jon and they run off with their pants around their ankles.

Any other ideas, feel free to comment.

Okay fellas, for any of y'all who may have been keeping up, I had launched a new testing grounds in my last post. THIS ONE has had some drastic improvements and important features now.

FIXES
1. No more ladder/ledge glitching. I think. Used to be able to jump off the ladder before you completely climbed over and screw up the player MC so you couldn't do anything.
2. You can actually hold on to the ladders all the time jumping on now without falling backwards a second and looking like a desperate kitty.
3. Rolling and climb-over animations are a LOT smoother.
4. Used to be when you were rolling you could continuously roll without holding the down arrow, just keep pressing JUMP repeatedly and you'd keep rolling. Fixed.
5. Controls have now officially swapped sides. Used to use the WASD for movement and arrows for the "SNES" buttons.

NEW STUFF
1. A WORKING TANK!!!! :D
2. When on slopes, the player will crouch instead of completely going prone. It just looks better. (Thanks Step!)

Well, that's all for now. I'm continuing to work on this project as you read this. Unless I'm sleeping. Because I do need to sleep on a regular basis. So, until next update, have an awesome day. :)

I'm proud to announce my new testing grounds! Nice area to test out and fine-tune my platforming physics and such. And the big open outside area? Tank testing.
...that is, once I GET the tank put together... :D

And now, you can climb rails as you please! (They're near the beginning and end of the testing grounds.)
As that's working out completely, I'm now working on the ladder-climbing, which will be a little harder, at least when it comes to the frame changes... not to mention I still have to work on the actual animations for it. And the rolling... I mean there's tons of stuff I still have to do, but the platforming must be finished first.

So, we now have the flamethrower/flame-whip, behaves pretty much like the one in Contra 3. :D

On top of that, I've also added ejecting shell casings, which disappear momentarily after you shoot them. Why? Because I don't want them using up unnecessary memory that I could be using to REALLY make the game look awesome. :D

I've also fixed the pits so when you fall down them, you "respawn" back on dry land. No, I do not have the health or lives set up yet, but it will come at some point. For now, I need to sleep, and then work on some more stuff for this. And then deal with another week workin' them details... Humvees don't PMCS themselves, you know, and I want mine fixed already for the next field exercise... I freakin' hate having a brokedick vehicle. Scouts need decent equipment... yet infantrymen get MaxPros? So much for high-speed...

UPDATE: Fixed the platforming crap so that you don't "teleport" when jumping upwards due to the horizontal collision tests. Changed it so it checks your sides at _y+10 when on the ground (closer to the middle) and _y+25 when in the air (closer to the feet). But what happens when you come up against a platform with a wall 5 above it? A better question might be "why would I be stupid enough to put one like that?"

UPDATE #2: Ladies and gentlemen, we now have grenades... with left and right panning! :D Well, we already had grenades, they just didn't go "BOOM!" until this afternoon. Looked for explosion animations for inspiration, gave up, got lazy, and just scripted the explosions, so no two are the same. I think when I take another break from this project, I'll make a quick tutorial on how to make scripted explosions. :)

Alright, so I got the shooting now working... sort of. I got the basic shots appearing and moving correctly. Only really have the machine gun and shotgun types working right now for sure, but I'm working on the grenade launchers and the flamethrower right now...
For now, this is what I got...

And the "final" title sequence build...

Any sort of tips or advice or anything will be considered and greatly appreciated.
That being said, have a great day fellas! :D

Okay, what's up guys? Little bit of an update since... never made an initial newspost to start with... XD

Anyways, for those of you who don't know me or do know me or-- okay enough confusion, I WAS cdjproductions, but I created a new account (this one) a few years ago when I was young since my parents were giving me shit about my account and how I'll look bad by association and blah-blah-blabbity-bleh! (I honestly don't understand half the shit they rant and rave about.) So, this is my current and actually active account. Still have a few things I need to re-upload... XD

Recently got out of basic training, or one station unit training actually, and been training at my current duty station in New York. A lot. So I haven't really had time to start working on some of my stuff except in bits and pieces at a time.

I'm a partial musician and partial artist. I can also code a little bit of AS2. Flash 8 is all I have and can afford, so don't get on me about updating to AS3.

Updates? Uh, right now I got a Tankmen game underway, gameplay inspired by Contra 3, and... well, I'm working on it. Concepted when I was back in high school since I found the April Fool's Tankmen game... I hate that guy so much. XD
Originally there was a WHOLE LOT OF CRAP that I was gonna put into the game, but of course, my procrastinating and my attempting to do so much at once got the best of me. So here I am, trying again, and dumbed it down a bit to where it's actually possible to do! Comment for a quick look if you care to. :D