I want to announce that i’ll be putting Shining Flash on hold for what i would call “a more worthy project.” I’ve been playing around with MM Communication Server and realized that a one-on-one Shining Style battle system is very much within the realm of possibilities. The turn-based nature of the Shining Style battle system fits perfectly within the multiplayer scheme, like a good old chess game.
Furthermore there are some major advantages, for example there’s no need for Artificial Intelligence.
I’ve created a Flash Chat application to showcase the server. Recently i have expanded the chat to contain a lobby and allow users to pair up to play a game, so things are already in motion. I don’t have a page up for this project yet, but i’ll be posting news here to keep things updated.
There’s been another big shake up at Bowie Online folks.
We recently discovered a new game client thanks to our old employee Bowie.
We wrestled with some hard choices:
stay at player worlds, keep the maps, and pass up the swanky extra options, or move to our new engine, lose the maps, and be swept up in option heaven.
we chose to move ultimately, and because of the move, new things have developed.
we are implementing a dual promotion system for each character. in other words, each hero can be promoted twice.
we are therefore expanding our sprite collection massively (which will benefit the TRAP as well), and including a selection of edited sprites based on the originals, to give a total of 360 hero character sprites (instead of simply having the 30 promoted sprites we have now.)
The bad news is that we are effectively beginning afresh as far as the game goes, and a release is once again no longer on the cards for the near future, but the wait will be worth it.
Hi guys,
Just replaced the BABS 2.0 release with a BABS 2.01 release. It only has two changes, but I think they’re quite vital!
First of all, I added support for linking multiple battles together. Finishing your first battle will lead you to the next map as defined in the (mapname).scriptfile file :).
I decided to release this right away, because this feature sort of enables you to make ‘Tatakai’-like games, where one battle follows up another. Support for town and walkabout scenes will follow later, but expect that to be highly Shining Force 2-like :P.
With that being said, I am hereby going to launch a contest!
I would like you guys to make your own battle scenes, which means the following:
- Make a full map with SMEE (the map editor), either using the existing tileset or using your own!
- Fill in a proper entityfile that contains the participants of your battle.
- If you like, feel free to use custom sprites and battle animations. Ripping them from somewhere else is fine with me too, but let me know where stuff came from!
- Custom music is allowed too, just send a single midi file along then :)
Put all your custom files in a .zip archive and e-mail it to djgroen@science.uva.nl
The contest closes at March, 10th because I really can’t wait much longer to release the next update :P.
All decent maps will make it to the next BABS release, and the winning battle map will be featured in the actual SSC game! :D
This will not be the last version of BABS, but it has been tested and largely debugged. Also, compared to the beta it has a bunch of improvements.
After all the programming today I’m too lazy to do screenshots, but you can check out the program here :).
Depending on community interest I will further patch and enhance this program. If the interest is minimal or non-existant, I’ll just focus on developing SSC instead ;)
Enjoy!
What it contains:
- A fully working fully 3D SHF style battle engine
Need I say more? ;)
Grab it from the menu up above and be sure to read the readme file before playing :)
