It was actually completed months ago, I’ve just been lazy about adding it to my site.



The basis of the game is pretty standard – fight your way through wave after wave of enemy jets, and get as many points as you can.

To help keep things interesting there are two different styles of play – Campaign and Survival.

The ‘Campaign’ mode is set out in a stage by stage basis.
There are 7 stages set across 5 different scenes, with each scene containing a different set of enemy aircraft that get progressively more difficult as the game goes on.
At the end of each stage your score and bonuses are added up. As you score more and more points you unlock new skins for your jet.

You are also given the opportunity to spend the credits you collect on upgrades for your jet. These are spread across three key areas – Armament, Avionics and Electronics – and include things like faster lock-on times, multiple missiles, radar jamming, agility upgrades, etc.


At the end of the last three areas you are confronted by extremely large ‘bosses’ that almost fill the screen. They attempt to ram you as well as bombard you with multiple missiles. Arghhh!


Survival mode is kinda the same except that instead of a ‘mission’ based approach, you get just one life and fight through as many waves of enemy jets as you can. You also get to choose which scene the game will be set in, so you can practice with the various sky lines.

Nerdy Stuff

So, how is it built? Well, for starters it is all done in flash, which I think would be kinda obvious since that is what I tend to work with.

An original source of inspiration came from the ABC Flyer experiment over at wonderfl.net. The source code was very informative, but way over my head in some areas, so I kinda got lost with some of the 3D stuff going on.

The 3D engine I ended up using for the game was Away3D lite (away3d.com/) which luckily for me came out around the time that I started this project. Up until that time I had only ever used PaperVision 3D, but I kinda wanted something smaller and faster to keep the game running smoothly. I found Away3D Lite to be really easy to use and was soon up and running with a demo similar to the wonderfl example.

Without going into too much detail, here is how some of the inner workings work:

The model of the F35 jet was a 3D model that the 3D guys at VJ built. I added in a 3D cone at runtime to act as the flame for the AfterBurner which I simple scaled up and down to suit the speed. I also added in some contrails to the wing tips by generating a series of semi-transparent white planes that were laid out to form a line.

The missiles use a similar technique as the contrails. They are a small cone shape which drops out a series of transparent planes behind it.

The enemy jets are simple 2D planes with a jet texture added on. They all use a common tweened motion path some predefined constraints with some randomness chucked in for good measure.

The ground / water is a simple plane with a tiled bitmap texture. Rather than move the plane, the bitmap data of the texture itself is offset based on the speed of the game. The sky / background is another plane that is positioned so that the bottom slightly overlapped the floor plane. The bottom of the background texture faded out to transparent so that it blended nicely with the ground level.

That covers the main mechanics of the game.

Massive kudos to the 3D guys at VJ that did all the models, as well as the designers who set up all the in game graphics and backgrounds for the various scenes.

You can check the game on the Defence Jobs Games site. You can also read about it on the Visual Jazz site.

To help make the learning for fun and keep the kids interested, a major section of the site was a series of mini games with a planet saving theme. It was my job to build those games… I love my job

Read on to hear about the games, and then check them out at VISY Enviromaniacs.

Each of the games had a different theme, focussing on different ways to save the environment. To keep things interesting, we made sure that the games were also different in the way that they played. We didn’t one to have 5 of the same game with just a graphics changed.

As always, deadlines were tight, but the managers and designers that I worked with were right on top of things, so it all ended up falling into place.

Here is a quick run through of what we made:

Recycle Frenzy

Recycle Frenzy was the first game we made. It was a bit of across between Bejeweled, Tetris and a sorting game. Pieces of litter would be added to the bottom of the screen, one row at a time. The player would have to drag the pieces of litter the appropriate bin – general waste, recycling, paper or green waste.

If the rubbish made it all the way to the top of the screen, the game was over.

To add a bit of spice to the game, the player could swap the positions of litter by dragging them around the grid. Arranging litter into larger groups before dragging it to the bin would result in bonus points being added to the score.

Also, by filling up the bins the user unlocked ‘power ups’ that allowed them to do things like remove an entire row or column with a single click.

Keeping with the tradition with these types of games, the speed would gradually increase as the game went on, causing for some very frantic game play – hence the ‘frenzy’ part

Energise the Earth

Energise the Earth is a bit of a strange game. It is a very simple concept, but proved to be a bit harder to build then initially thought.

The basic idea of the game is to collect the energy that is escaping from appliances around the house. As you look around the room, ‘energy tokens’ will jump out from different appliances and you have to roll your mouse over them to collect them.

Each room you enter has a specified number of energy tokens you have to collect to successfully pass the room. If you reach that amount, you move onto the next room. If you don’t, it is game over.

There are 5 rooms in total, including the living room, study, kitchen, laundry and bedroom. If you pass all of the rooms, you start again, but with higher umber of tokens required in each of the rooms.

It is surprising frantic and keeping up with the pace can be quite stressful. Good luck!

Wild About Water

Wild About Water was the second game I had to build. This one was a bit more complex and confusing, but one you get the hang of it, it is quite addictive and satisfying.

The idea behind it is that you have to keep on top of all the possible water wasting events that occur around a house. Everything from fixing dripping taps to covering swimming pools to prevent evaporation. When something goes wrong, you are alerted and given an amount of time to fix the problem. The longer you take to fix the problem, the more water you will lose. If you run out of water, the game is over.

It’s not all bad though. When you fix a problem, you are given the chance to collect that water with your bucket, adding to your overall water total.

If that wasn’t enough though, there are a couple of side tasks you have to keep in mind. Firstly, you have to keep the plants alive by giving them some of your water at regular intervals. Secondly, you have to drag dishes to the dish washer and clothes to the washing machine, making sure that the machines are full before they start so that you don’t waste water.

As I write this, it does sound overly complex, but like I said at the start, once you get used to it, it does prove to be a challenge.

Bitter About Litter

Bitter about Litter is all about collecting and sorting litter. Sounds like fun, I know, but the game does go a long way to making it so.

You control a guy, in a park full of litterers. As they drop throw their litter on the ground, you run over and pick it up. You then bring it back to your bins where you quickly sort it into either waste or recycling.

When there is litter on the ground, your health begins to drop. The more litter that is there, the faster your health will drop. When you put rubbish int the bins, you get a bit of your health back – as long as it is going into the right bin. When your health runs out, the game is over.

To add some more interest to the game, the player is awarded bonus points for sorting items of rubbish into the the bins without making mistakes. There are also bonus points for returning with as much rubbish as you can carry.

Another nice feature we slotted into the game is that the character in the game actually takes on the look of the player’s ‘enviromaniac’ avatar. A small thing I know, but still pretty cool.

Pick Your Packets

Pick Your Packets is all about learning and identifying the different packaging types you may encounter in the super market.

The player is given the task of sorting the various products into either good or bad packaging types. Good items get scanned and added to the shopping basket, bad items get returned to the store. To help them out, when ever they pick up a product a small description is displayed on the check-out display.

As the game goes on, the items on the conveyor begin to come out more rapidly. If the player is not fast enough, the products will begin to back up, causing the players health to drop. If the health reaches 0, the game is over.

Thats pretty much it so far. If you are interested in checking them out just head over to the VISY Enviromaniac site. Also, big Kudos to the team at Visual Jazz who I work with. They did an awesome job on building the site. You can read a bit about it on the VJ site here.

You’ll be sent an email with a custom URL that you and anyone else can use to play your online jigsaw.

The simple application that I have created makes the whole proccess pretty simple.

Click here to build your own Jigsaw

Once you are done you can go check out your puzzle or play on of mine by clicking here.

Just as a side note, any images you upload will potentially be available to the public, so please don’t upload anything that breaks copyright or that may be offensive to others.

You start off with a board full of randomly coloured marbles. When you click on a group of two or more matching colours, they disappear, and the grid collapses to fill the gaps. The bigger the group you match, the more points you earn.

It’s simple but pretty addictive.

Click here to play Marble Buster

Instructions:

• Use your mouse to select a set of marbles (two or more adjoinging marbles of the same colour). You will be given an indication of how many points they are worth.
• Click that group again and they will disappear.
• The remaining marbles will collapse to fill the gaps. First they will drop straight down, and then they will slide right to fill any gaps.
• Everytime the left most column is empty, new marbles will be added to the board.

Click here to play Sevenson Jigsaw

Instructions:

• Use your mouse to drag and drop pieces to the correct positions.
• Use the left and right arrow keys to rotate the current piece whilst you are dragging it.
• When pieces are aligned correctly they will snap together to become one piece.

Graphics Download:

When this game was being created it was hard to find a free graphic of a jigsaw puzzle on the web. I ended up creating my own by scanning an actual jigsaw puzzle and then tracing the pieces myself.

So you don’t have to go through the same trouble, below are the links for my jigsaw puzzle shapes:

• Jigsaw Puzzle Outlines - EPS
• Jigsaw Puzzle Outlines - JPG

Build your own online jigsaw puzzle:

I’ve added the ability for anyone to create their own puzzle to play and share online. All you need is an image and an email address and you will be on your way.

Click here to build your own Jigsaw

You play as a frog, sitting on the side of the pond. As bugs fly over your head you use your tongue to catch as many as you can. To keep things interesting, there is a timer counting down the whole time. Every time you catch 10 bugs, you get a little bit more time.

The longer you last, the harder the bugs are to catch, and the more points you get.

See if you can get the highest score!

Click here to play Grabbit

Instructions:

• Use your mouse to click where you want the frog’s tongue to shoot to.
• Every 10 bugs you catch results in a time extension.
• The further your tongue shoots out, the more ‘tongue strain’ you will build up.
• If your ‘tongue strain’ reaches full you will not be able to reach as far.