Current progress and the gameDentity network

Generally I don't do as many of these blog posts as often as I should because I generally take too long to write em' and sometimes find it hard to justify with currently low views / comments etc, however, on this occasion I'll try to be concise and quick!

Lets go back a few months
As you may (or may not) remember from previous posts , I had been working on completing aDance, my physics-based arena dodging arcade game and even did a vlog for it. I also began talking about big ideas of including achievements and an in-game indie music play system.

All of this was well and good, but I came to realise I was very limited in my ability to actually deliver and implement these features in any of my creations due to the fact that my skill-set was limited in the necessary  areas to do so. I was stuck with relying on other third-party options (such as mochi, heyzap, gamersafe and the like) to implement some of these features or hack around them to make them work in a non-seamless fashion, not ideal and not good.

Now I'm not bashing these 3rd party options, they save time and enable many developers to earn money and socialise their content which is great, however if you want certain features implemented (such as a proper achievements system rather then the medals in mochi) you have to either hope and wait, hack it around the provided features or (as they rightfully often say) implement it yourself, so that's just what I decided to do! :)

Databases, PHP, MySQL, CSS and all things Dynamic Web
Around the 23rd of August of this year (around the same time 2 years that I started my journey with Flash), I began learning all the necessary web technologies to implement my OWN gaming and community platform (an ability I was always missing in my development tool-kit) for the above (and a few other) reasons.

I'm not gonna go through all the technically terms and details (Wikipedia's real good for that), but I can safely say that PHP was a tough but joyful language to learn and was made all the more easier because actionscript is very similar too it.

The hardest parts to learn were probably things like security (very important), relative file loading / linking and the differences in Class and Object based development in PHP vs Actionscript. Once I got my head around things like this it was simply a case of combining it with Dreamweaver, MySQL and AMFPHP, which results in me having a system that has the capability of doing all the things previously stated and all the things in my head, on the website and off via Flash.

Introducing the gameDentity™ network
And so gameDentity (or #gDn) is born. It will be entering beta 0.01 very soon and in a sentence I describe it as a Premium Social Core-Gaming Network.

The primary goal is for it to be a complete back-end, profile / user link and community system for Eternal Syndrome games and content (online and desktop). It's going to be online gaming's answer to XBox Live which I'm a huge fan of and use a lot (once I implement the online game play module).

The features include (some implemented already):

• User Account Profile
• Achievements (Currently 6 - 8 types including Titles, Treasures and classic types)
• Leaderboards (Fully customisable and can contain many columns of criteria)
• Save / Load system
• Site and Flash based Login (works anywhere Flash does thanks to AMFPHP)
• Native virtual currency (gCash)
• Stats via gXP and gPoint (which can be used to get savings on premium content)
• And more...

It has the flexibility and capability of allow third-party developers and partners to use the system.

Most of thee above will much easier to understand and visualise once it's out their in the wild, but as an example, a game like Diamond Raider will have treasure achievements for finding limited special treasured Diamond types that are only available dynamically to a limited amount of players and therefore highly sought after, think of it as the achievement only the quick and great get.

Right that's it, this was almost a hour in writing and I've still got a lot of work to do on this, mainly the Flash gDn modules, so thanks for reading and my twitter (@eternalsyndrome) is really the best place for regular / up to minute development updates. Thanks again!

Overall quick update and info on project 'stronghand'

General Update
So, I'm back from updating my 'Flash Skillz' so to speak which I've been doing a few months now and have begun putting them to good use. These new skills are fundamentally based on things that have created a better understanding of object oriented programming, creating reusable global classes (e.g. MathES.returnValueWithZeros(55, 3); returns the string (that's text) 055 and can be used everywhere in an as3 project without change) and just being better organised and consistent in Flash / as3 to create and test ideas quickly and efficiently (like using as3 Vectors instead of Array's when valid, I know, very techy speak :S).

I've also been looking at the free engine API's Flashpunk and Flixel where I've been looking to experiment with doing so fan remakes of classic games (they seem to be heavily retro game leaned). I've made good progress with Flashpunk but got stuck with collision (due to send a forum post for that), but thankfully I got it working successfully in the Flash IDE at least (it's meant for originally for Flex / FlashDevelop environments only). This is beneficial of course because if you do happen to have the Flash IDE, doing things like animation / interfaces is a doddle (you have to code all of this with the aforementioned API's which is a little backwards in my opinion).

Project 'stronghand'
I'm now just updating and improving my first premium flash game project aDance, codename 'stronghand' which will involve testing and adding new gameplay elements / environments, complete consistent new look, adding and adjusting elements according to feedback, completing mochi elements such as coins and social API (facebook / twitter etc), adding achievements (got the list already, but some may be arena based, so I need to account for that), improving the menu system (it's sleek already but I want to make it more engaging and entice play, I'll be looking at things such as Burnout 3, Flatout and other arena / track based progression games too) and many other tasks.

I'll have all these done by / before Monday next week and will be adding more info and pictures etc as valid around that time which will in turn help with the context of this update post and future posts regarding aDance, but for the moment here's the sell.

In one sentence:
Unadulterated and Unashamed Core-Gaming, Orb-Dodging, Blood-Pumping Arena action!

In one paragraph:
Unadulterated and Unashamed Core-Gaming, Orb-Dodging, Blood-Pumping Arena action! Avoid, Dance, Duck and Dive your way around the Danger Orbs and get to those score zones in an attempt to make the cut in the various exciting & challenging physics-based Arenas! This freemium game takes great advantage of the high-end Box2d physics engine making for a unique, exhilarating and high energy gaming experience!